Emotion phobia?

Still untangling 'stuff'...

Perhaps my need for nurturance and comfort is so strong that even ordinary kindness and generosity - but wait. I don't have this problem with waitresses or nice people I encounter in superficial situations - it only (? not sure about this?) seems to throw me when I get too close to somebody too fast in my desperate need for intimate (whether physical, emotional or both) contact.

I think that about sums it up, really, but I'll leave the rest of it here for safe-keeping.

I felt:
Set up

Hm, that’s pretty much *it* - the same ol’, same ol’, ‘fall for it’ routine – that somebody *seems* to be there for me when they’re really not. So I trust them, and then, just when I get close enough to *really* hurt myself if I fall – they yank the emotional rug out from under me.

So: I need to keep *my* balance - if 'leaning' on somebody I don't know makes me feel off-balance, then maybe I

shouldn't lean on them? Or, at least, not until I know them better and have taken some smaller 'risks' first.

And I shouldn't respond to their need to be 'helpful' if it makes *me* uncomfortable.

***
Googling (as usual) for ideas to help with this stuff, I came across the term “emotion phobia” in this article, 75 Nice Things People Say to Shut Up Your Feelings, which is here:

http://mindfulconstruct.com/2011/02/18/75-things-people-say-to-shut-up-your-feelings/

(Long-ish) quote from the article, bolds mine:

It’s the other person’s problem
Instead of looking at their own reaction and owning up to their own discomfort when you talk about something that’s “too” emotional — the other person blames you.

Makes it all your fault that they’re unwilling to get emotional, or to be fully present, or to genuinely accept that you feel the way you feel.

People who don’t want to experience their own negative emotions sure as heck don’t want you to express yours. Because then they might have to take response ability for their actions, connect with you, empathize, or get in touch with themselves — which they’ve (unconsciously) decided is way too painful.

You become someone else’s problem when you voice what they can’t accept in their own self.

Pay attention when someone deflects your feelings
Start to listen for those phrases in your every day. You’ll pick up on when people try to censor you.

You might decide not to let someone censor you. Or you might see how uncomfortable they actually are, and rethink how you can (casually) relate to them.

Emotion-phobic exchanges aren’t always the end of the world. Some might even be well-intentioned. But they can prick you when you don’t notice. So just pay attention.

Context matters too. You can’t pour your heart out to everyone. Emotional intimacy is exclusive, not open.

Just remember, you deserve better than emotional censorship.

I find the whole article really helpful on the topic of invalidation, boundary-setting and recognizing when somebody’s blowing you off. The comments section contains some additional useful stuff.

***
The following are the ideas I started with. I've put this part at the end for safe-keeping, but the 'answer' I was searching for is the stuff at the top, which is what I *really* need to keep track of.

I felt that g was ‘taking care’ of me in ways that felt wonderful; and: I *also* felt *suspicious*.

A ‘validation’, perhaps? of that – foreboding? comes to me in this thought:

What if what I experienced as ‘care-taking’ was actually him
micro-managing his emotional environment?

That is, any time anything seemed to have the potential to rock *his* boat, emotionally, he would – control the situation? or shift the conversation in a direction he felt more comfortable with?

This was not *universally* true with him, which makes this harder to suss out – but I think when it was just the two of us alone in a an emotionally close situation, this ‘mechanism’ of his came into play as I got closer to areas he didn’t want me to see yet. So rather than setting a boundary or expressing himself *as soon as* he got uncomfortable, he let me get closer and closer, until he was *so* uncomfortable that he felt he had no option other than to ‘throw me out’.

Which of course felt *horrible*.

Whoa nelly, gettin’ off balance again here. Find your center. What’s true? This is too much about the other guy and not enough about *me*.

Second try at focusing on *me* is at top of post.

***
More of what I’m thinking on the ‘micro-managing his emotional environment’ thing:

He senses me getting uncomfortable about something – cold, hungry, tired (almost as if I were a baby?) – and tries to head whatever it is off at the pass – as long as someone *else* was there with us, his concern was more about the dynamic between the *three* of us.

But as soon as it was just *two* - feels like I’m trying to turn my own brain inside out here – too much work – but if it helps me disengage, disentangle, then it’s worth it –

So maybe he ‘care-takes’ as a sort of pre-emptive form of self defense? It could be that the emotionally loaded talk the three of us had, me, g & f, pre-disposed him to that? Dunno.

Anyway. The above explanation would help make sense of what happened in a way that I can actually *work* with, in the absence of further open, honest, compassionate, caring conversation.

Hm.